


Swimming Together

by lferion



Category: Amaluna - Cirque de Soleil
Genre: F/M, Interesting Anatomy, M/M, Magic, Swimming, Tails, Yuletide 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Miranda wants Cali and Romeo to love each other as well as her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lesserstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesserstorm/gifts).



> Many thanks to the Usual Suspects, for encouragement and sanity-checking. Also thanks to YouTube, and the interwebs, for visuals and resources.

— _Romeo_ —

Romeo is overwhelmed. But not drowning. Never drowning. He knows how to swim, even in strange waters, and these are strange and wondrous waters indeed. First the island, appearing out of storm-wrack and lightning just as their ship is foundering, land and safety beyond hope. Beyond its presence and ordinary attributes of shelter, water and food are its extraordinary attributes and people. Such people! People of feather, fur and scale, people who can bend air and light, fire and water to their will, make things of beauty and use out of seemingly nothing. People who have welcomed them, him. 

And foremost in welcome and extraordinaryness is Miranda. Seeming water and air in human form, capable and competent and utterly unashamed of her person or her power. Loving where she will. Loving him. But not, he is become well aware, only him. For there is Cali. Who has always been there for her, it seems, as magical and amazing as she is. Companion, guardian, friend, confidante. And lover. 

The world he comes from does not admit of a woman having more than one man at a time. (The world he comes from turns a blind eye to many things. It was in chafing at that willful blindness, that narrow, uneven and constrained existence that he took ship, he now realizes. To find a place where the colors and wonders he sees are understood to be real, not imaginings, are acknowledged to have power. Where he may admit that he desires more than his world will ever allow him. 

Romeo is not jealous of what Miranda has with Cali, though he thought at first he ought to be. He knows Miranda loves him, does not doubt his welcome and belonging in her bed and at her side. But Miranda has more than one side — as indeed Romeo feels he himself has, and might begin to dare to acknowledge, express, explore — and her bed is wide.

What is the balance? How are they to fit? How does he want them to fit?

Romeo has not properly met Cali yet, he realizes. That needs to change. Is about to change. The now almost dreamlike experience, trapped in the water-bowl (so small, barely larger than a bath), glass and water surrounding him and a froth of air-bubbles rushing and breaking against his face each time his lungs began to strain for air, with Cali dancing seemingly atop the surface of the water itself doesn't really count, as far as Romeo is concerned, though perhaps it ought to. He's not sure whether to believe it actually happened.

The arousal and desire that attends with the fear whether memory or dream is not a thing Romeo has chosen to think about. Yet.

(Oh, he has seen Cali, even spoken with him, formal words of apology and forgiveness, greetings and pleasantries, sat at the evening fire with him on the other side of Miranda, or across the grove in conversation with Prospera — now that is a meeting he has had, terrifying and exhilarating both, Miranda’s mother seeing every particle of him, inside and out, mind and heart and spirit as well as flesh. Several times, wet and furious and frightened all at once, yet never allowing fury or fright to rule him. He does not know how rare that is, how necessary for survival in this land of elemental magic.)

* * *

— _Cali_ —

Cali watches his lady, his Miranda (not that she is his in any possessive way — if anyone is a possession he is more hers, but she well knows the responsibilities of her powers and position — and people are not possessions in any case, but the connections between them are long and firmly forged) swim and dance and play in her luminous bowl of water with the most interesting of the shipwrecked men. There is spark and fire there, an energy, potential. This man sees: sees the human in the magical form, the flows and flares of ordinary and arcane working, the way everything on this island touches and is touched by each other on some level. His companions do not. They would never have found this place, even if they were to walk through this grove. 

Miranda swims with Romeo and Cali watches. His tail twitches as they twine together. He wants to twine with them. He has watched over Miranda for years now, silent in the leaf-rustle and wave-wash. She knows he watches; he has never veiled himself from her sight. Never hidden his heart either.

What is this man, so immediately, intimately drawn to Miranda? What is he to Miranda? What is Miranda to him? Cali must know, must understand the mettle of this stranger-person, with no magic in his making, and yet the powers of the island respond to him, and it seems he is perceptive enough to see and hear and understand that there is magic, wonder, power unlike that found in his world. Is he a danger? (Of course he is dangerous — that is not the question. All persons of power and will are dangerous. The question is what they will do with their power, how exercise their will.) Does he choose to go, leave the island to return to the dull mystery of his inert original land will Miranda go with him? Or will she stay? Will she choose him? Her land? If he stays, will she choose to love him alone, as more human and less magic? More of earth and less of fire? Cali does not think she would abandon anyone so, but he is feeling unsettled, wind-ruffled, the ground he knows gone slick and uncertain. 

And whatever else, he does not want her to be hurt. If she leaves, Cali cannot go with her, cannot watch her back, remove annoyances from her path. He cannot live in Romeo’s world. But, even tested, Romeo can live in theirs. Cali was quite favorably impressed with Romeo’s reactions and resolve to somehow prevail, survive, win through, when presented with the challenge of being held in the water-bowl. (The water-bowl itself was not very happy to be used so — it has a romantic spirit — and made sure he knew it. It's forgiven him now though. The fact that Romeo has decided to stay, thereby making the possibility of Miranda leaving quite moot no doubt helped. Cali is glad for that — for Miranda’s happiness, the bowl’s, even Romeo’s, but something is still amiss, out of balance. He does not know what will make it right again.)

Perhaps Miranda will know. He hopes so. She usually has good ideas.

* * *

— _Romeo_ —

One would think that all the splashing from playing in the water-bowl would both lower than the water level and make mud of the ground around it, but neither inconvenience occurs. What else is magic good for, than to remedy such minor annoyances? But so knowledge good for such things. Fine sand drains easily and is pleasant to the foot, rock underneath is stable and sure, and a nearby spring provides the water (though as far as Romeo is concerned, how the water gets from spring to bowl truly is magic). He thinks the bowl has expanded since he first saw and was entranced by Miranda’s grace and joy as she swam. He isn't wrong — it has, though not for quite the reason he guesses. There are three that swim and frolic there now, not one, or two. The bowl responds to Miranda’s desires.

Come to the water-bowl, was the message, humming in the rocks under his bare feet, feathery breezes tickling his ears. “Go, meet him, learn him, know him, let him learn and know you. Swim together, not apart” Miranda, kissing Romeo awake, to arousal, firming resolve. “I would have you both to love.” (She does not say, though it is in her thought, that she would have them love each other, wrestle and want and writhe for each other as well as for her. She wants to watch. She could command, bend them to her will and make it so, but she will not. They are people, not puppets, poppets, toys. It would break them, and break her as well. She is old enough to know better. Wise enough. Prospera has taught her well.)

So here Romeo is, arrived at the water-bowl. The water-bowl larger than it was, the grove has breathed out, expanded around it. Cali is swimming. Romeo has not seen him swim before, not truly, not like this, the crystal of the bowl magnifying limbs and curves, tail and face in turn. The water caresses the green and gold of skin and scales. Cali is sensuous, beautiful, dangerous. (But so is Miranda those things. So is he.) Luminous gold eyes meet his, inviting, challenging, desiring. Come, they say. Come swim with me. Miranda had invited him so. 

The same fierce exhilaration of feeling that led him to join Miranda seizes him, and he begins to understand. Romeo lets fall the brief garment he is wearing and vaults to the edge of the bowl. The rim is smooth and sure under his hands, his feet. Welcoming and warm. The bowl is happy to have him here. Cali’s eyes blaze a brighter gold as Romeo stands and stretches, showing off, displaying himself with a grin to match Cali’s own. He is hard. He wants this.

Cali rises up out of the water to stand on the rim opposite, posing likewise, tail a suggestive curve, hips canted to show the generous bulge pushing at the triangle of cloth — or is it a pouch of skin? Romeo suddenly aches to know, to touch, to feel. He dives in the water to swoop up to the other side, and Cali, laughing, bends impossibly backwards, arching over in glorious abandon. Around the rim he goes, forwards, sideways, backwards, turning on hands and tail and feet, as Romeo watches, breath caught, achingly erect. Then Cali is standing before him, glistening. They are of a height. Matched.

“Shall we swim together?” Cali says, and his voice is a warm shiver along Romeo’s nerves. “Learn what pleases? How we might move together, not against?” He tilts his head, looking searchingly into Romeo’s eyes. “Not for Miranda’s sake only, but yours and mine. For ourselves.”

“Yes,” Romeo says, “yes.” 

Then they are both in the water, slipping down, sliding against each other, skin and scales alike. The water-bowl holds them as they twist and twine, tag and tease. The dance is not as smooth or effortless as with Miranda, on either part, but it is a dance, and both are wanting to make it work. 

The end of Cali’s tail is like a finger, flexible and sensitive, Romeo discovers, as Cali uses it to explore the cleft between his cheeks, making Romeo whimper and squirm as it teases at his [hole], the tender place behind his balls. Cali arches and shivers as Romeo investigates the juncture where scales meet skin, finds the fascinating shapes beneath the thin membrane of Cali’s pouch and follows his gasping words to press and stroke “There, yes, there!” The pouch opens under Romeo’s fingers and his hand is filled with a shaft of whorls and ridges, thick and hot and Cali is writhing and keening, tail-tip a pulsing coil behind Romeo’s balls, hands gripping Romeo‘s shoulders, head tipped back against the rim of the bowl. Then Romeo takes himself in hand and presses their groins together and they are moving hard together in delicious, desperate friction, water splashing everywhere. They come one after the other, seed hot on Romeo’s hand, slick on his belly. 

For a long moment they stay pressed together, trembling, breathing hard, feeling each other's pulses gradually slow. Then Cali eels up and impossibly around Romeo, skin and scales an amazing texture against Romeo’s tender places and eager skin, and then Romeo is no longer in the water, but transported to a place of warmth and comfort, wrapped about with limbs and cloth and hair.

Miranda's hair — Cali has none, anywhere, as Romeo now delightfully knows — and Cali's tail, and two sets of arms. They are in Miranda's bed, all three of them, and Romeo knows he home, the world in balance.

This is what Miranda meant, what she wants him to know. He can want them both. He can have them both, all of them together. Not just Miranda-and-Romeo, Miranda-and-Cali, but Cali-and-Romeo, Romeo and Miranda and Cali. It won't always be this easy, there will be storms, but oh, stronger together than apart.

* * *


End file.
